As we prepare to celebrate Jane Austen’s 250th anniversary, we may wonder whether her novels, written more than 200 years ago, can still be relevant to an audience more familiar with Instagram or Snapchat than with a quadrille or an afternoon tea. If one judged Jane Austen’s literary value on the basis of the never-ending production of movies, series and spin-offs based on her novels, it would be easy to dismiss her work as superficial love-stories focussed on recurring topics such as balls , courtship and marriage. However, her slim production of six novels is much more than this : she was a true pioneer both in subject matter and style.
When choosing the subject of her novels, Austen avoided the sensational plots beloved by her contemporaries and used instead the social interactions, values and rituals of the Regency society she lived in. Throughout her novels, the search for a suitable partner reflects the financial anxieties and restricted life of genteel but impoverished young ladies, such as herself. In the male-dominated 19th century, women’s life was limited by societal rules and the only way to secure both economic stability and social respectability was through marriage within their own social circle.
Though effectively a pioneer of the novel of manners, the most innovative trait of Austen’s literary production is the way Austen uses free indirect discourse to describe her heroines’ inner lives, their thoughts , frustrations and desire for change, thus anticipating twenty-century novelists, for example Virginia Woolf.
In conclusion, Jane Austen not only can be considered the most important writer of novel of manners if not the inventor; but also created heroines whose inner life we can feel empathy for : who, though limited and frustrated by the social mores of the time, strive to change and grow and finally find happiness. This is a universal desire that we can share more than 200 years after the novels were written.